Fund re-registration should never take more than seven days, according to SEI’s David Simpson, who also argued that those in the industry unable to meet this timeframe should upgrade their infrastructure to stop consumers losing out.
The SEI Wealth Platform has reduced average transfer times from 27 days to seven days over the last 18 months through signing-up to the Altus Transfer Gateway and making necessary changes to its own technology.
This has meant that when all parties (including the ceding counterparty) are connected, the business is now regularly seeing transfers being completed in 24 to 48 hours.
Mr Simpson, SEI’s chief relationship officer, called on other platform providers to do the same.
“While the majority of the larger platforms support electronic transfers, there are others who have not invested in this area and can at best be considered lagging behind their peers or at worst using it as a way to deliberately block the transfer of legacy assets,” he commented.
“This completely goes against giving consumers the choice they rightly deserve.”
While by this point some 100 organisations are members of the Tisa Exchange (TeX) initiative – which sets out an industry standard for re-registration – Mr Simpson said the true benefits will not be felt by consumers unless the whole industry upgrades their infrastructure.
Ben Cocks, director of Altus Business Systems, added that a well designed, fully integrated solution brings considerable efficiencies for administrators, but more importantly delivers a great service to the end customer.
peter.walker@ft.com
